01 March, 2009

hunger. cook. eat.

Hi,
Welcome to my new blog. Let me tell you a little about me and why I've decided to start this blog entitled "hunger. cook. eat."

I love to read.

That's the hunger part. I was in the wine industry (both retail and wholesale) for 14 years. I loved it and I hated it, but my interest in wine grew up with my interest in food. I spent a lot of time reading and researching wine. There is some exciting history behind wine, but the one thing that my reading seemed to underline again and again was that wine was nothing without food. Sure I've drunk more than a few bottles without something to eat, but to get the peak experience from a bottle of wine you still need something to accompany it. Something for contrast (either texture or flavor). Something to heighten your senses (ever wonder why they call a cocktail before dinner an "aperitif"). A palette upon which to work (after the bite and the sip, there's a lot of chemistry that takes place between them). So after 14 years in the wine industry, I realized that what I was really interested in was the food. I still like wine. I still like to hunt down unusual bottles and great deals, but I'm really more interested in the food and I'm hungry to learn.

Why?

Food is an important and vital part of our lives, yet it is often unconsidered or relegated to the status of onerous necessity. This is a problem.

I suppose that food is so plentiful in the U.S., that we don't feel like we have to ask questions about our food supply. However, over the past decade we have been faced with very difficult realities that strike directly at our sense of safety when we sit down to eat. Over the past few years alone, we have heard about contamination in our food sources that we never would have considered possible. Peanut butter. Spinach. Tomatoes. The list goes on. And it will continue. Paying attention to our food sounds a little more important now doesn't it?

We have so many demands on our time that it is tough to sit down and actually eat a meal; sitting down with family or friends even more so (schedules can be so very difficult to negotiate). Then there's the sensory overload. Our cellphones interrupt us. We are bombarded by images and sounds constantly. We're used to it. It's hard to turn off the cellphone, the computer or the television set and really appreciate something special to eat with someone who is special to us. But that's really what life is all about. When you get right down to it. It's easy to become a solitary troglodyte illuminated by the goblin glow of our screens stuffing ourselves with tasteless fuel. I know I've been there. But some of the warmest and best memories I have are of sitting around a table enjoying something that someone at the table cooked and laughing at nothing in particular. Convivial. We need something compelling to cause us to come together anymore and food is, at least it can be, it. But not just any food.

We in the U. S. are accused of being self-centered and ignorant of the world around us. This is often true. For me, opening my eyes to new tastes led directly to opening my eyes to different cultures. "Why," I kept asking, "do people eat so differently around the world?" The answer is in the place where they are. The "terroir" of food. We know this term from wine. It describes the unique qualities that a wine expresses because of the climate, the soil and the cultivation and management of the vines that make the grapes that make the wine. It's the same with food and culture. The place shapes the culture as much as it shapes the produce from the ground. In fact culture and cuisine grow up together, inextricably intertwined. You can bring home something from far away, but not knowing at least some of the background and the culture that brings it to you makes it hard to appreciate. You might not know that most freshly ground spices make the best curry powder and end up wondering what the fuss is about. This is not to say that you won't come up with new ideas in another place and another culture that may even surpass the "traditional" experience of the food. You will, but knowing the history may even suggest those new things. Besides, knowing the custom (if you're ever fortunate enough to go there) might just change a few minds about the self-centeredness of our culture. At the very least, it will help you make friends.

I like to cook.

Cooking is an expression of love and care for our fellow human beings (be they family or friends). Talk to someone working in a restaurant kitchen. Of course it's a job, but you have to consider why they continue to do it. Do they like working in a sauna where knives, fire and treacherously slick floors threaten their safety daily? No. Some just do it for the paycheck, but many do it because they love it. It makes them feel good to put out a product that nourishes and delights so many people. It nourishes them, in a way that we don't often experience in our culture, and they put even more effort and love into the food. It's an amazing cycle, but it's one that you can see at work elsewhere. Within families, between friends, between lovers. It is the cycle of cooking, it's magic and it's why I like to cook.

A lot of the food I grew up with, while it was made with love and extremely nourishing, wasn't the most exciting stuff. When I got into the wine industry I was exposed to a whole new world of tastes that blew my mind. It was like a drug and I wanted more. Along the way, I realized that the "gourmet" food industry was just as driven by fads and market impulses as much as any other business. Once I saw a little way past that, I started to see cultures. Many of them were very earthy cultures every bit as close to the soil as the one in which I was raised. The "gourmet" items were often, when it came right down to it, "peasant food." Something the poor ate because it was plentiful and nourishing. Now it's packaged in tiny quantities and sells for an outrageous price far away. Not everything in the gourmet universe is like that, but more than you might suspect.

Our own culture of food - to take a tangent here - is dangerous. You don't have to go far on the internet to find out about health problems confronting us because of our "culture of plenty". That's part of what should concern us about the "unconsidered" nature of food. Are we eating healthfully? Is our food safe? These are things that confront us all at one point in our lives or another and their answers lie not necessarily in the past, but in building a healthy culture of consumption. I'm as guilty as the next guy on this one, but I'm trying to change.

One of the ways I believe that we can change that is to return to our own roots to find the healthy practices that our grandparents used. Plenty of excercise (manual labor is still excellent excercise), less meat (just because you can afford it, doesn't mean that you should eat it at every meal) and more vegetables (you might not grow a garden like your grandparents did, but you've got plenty of options at the grocery).

Another way is to borrow healthy practices from other cultures. There are so many options and so many cultures around us, that it isn't hard to find those options. In many cases, all you have to do is ask. You can also read about them. I like to do both. You'd be amazed at how helpful people are when you show an interest in their culture and come to them with an open, willing mind.

That's another part of why I like to cook so much. I'm trying to build my own healthy culture.

That being said. I'm not nutritionist. I'm not here to give you advice on how to eat healthfully (I have enough trouble with that on my own). Not everything here will be healthy. I like butter and meat and sugar and salt and everything else that's bad for you. Without them, life just isn't quite as exciting.

Finally. I like to eat.

I like to sit around a convivial table with friends and family and laugh about nothing in particular. I like to make new memories of exciting new tastes and share them with everyone around me. Maybe I'll have kids to share all that with one day, but until then, I'll be sharing it with friends. And now you.

Welcome

4 comments:

  1. Another cool thing about living in this country (culinarily at least), is that we are exposed to SO many cultures and their foods. There aren't many other countries where one would ask, "Whose food shall we eat tonight?" and mean a culture, not a cook.

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  2. rico,
    You're right about that. Although multiculturalism is alive and well in almost any major metropolitan area around the world. There's a lot more movement of people now than there ever has been and they always seem to bring a little bit of home with them. Hooray for us!

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  3. You know, after some thought Rico, it occurs to me that the concept of "terroir" can be somewhat limiting as well. Especially when we are talking about food.
    Because of one thing and another, we in this country aren't really bound by some of that thinking and that, I think, leads to an interesting take on the culture of cuisine. As many of the cooks that have come to our shores, we adapt more easily to new ideas (unfortunately, to my mind, many of them are somewhat faddish). This is not to say that we're all open to new tastes, but a review of the history of our cuisine tells us that we are at least interested in new flavors and are often not bound by tradition in blending them. How many of you have said (at 3 in the morning): "I wonder how this pizza would taste with chocolate sauce?"
    That's a pretty unique approach to food and one that *can* serve us well (it doesn't always turn out like that). Interesting...

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